The Times of India 03.09.2010
Civic body to have rainwater harvesting in Zone D office
LUDHIANA: Finally, the Municipal Corporation (MC) has started groundwork of installing rainwater harvesting system in its Zone D office and Leisure Valley. The project has been hanging fire for quite a long time and due to careless attitude of officials, the file of the project has already been lost.
Bringing a few changes in the original plan, the officials had to install rainwater-harvesting system in the MC office only but now they have included Leisure Valley also in it. Along with this, MC officials had recently cancelled the contracts of private contractors handling the maintenance of Leisure Valley and now the entire maintenance work was in the MC's hand.
Sources said the officials had started preparing the expenditure report of the harvesting systems for both places and the total estimate was around Rs 5 lakh. The officials would submit report to the MC commissioner on Monday from where it would go for the approval of the Finance and Contract Committee (F&CC) only then the rainwater harvesting system could be installed.
According to the officials it was just because the file went missing the project got delayed otherwise it would have got sanction from the authorities and work would have started.
Around three years back, the MC authorities had decided to install the harvesting system in its offices starting with Zone D office as it was newly constructed. The officials had also selected another site for the system near Dholewal Chowk but for that they had sought permission from Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA), Chandigarh. Water-logging in Dholewal Chowk is a major problem, especially during the rainy season, therefore the authorities had suggested the proposal.
While giving information, XEN (Operation and maintenance department) Zone D Manjit Singh said that the officer concerned had been asked to compile the report again and he had almost completed his work and the file would be submitted to the commissioner on Monday.
